


Turquoise Couches

by gostaks



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: F/F, Three Seagrass's perspective while Mahit is in surgery, alternate perspective, discussion of potential negative impacts of brain surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/pseuds/gostaks
Summary: Mahit is in surgery. Three Seagrass is outside, and there's not much to do but think about how the hell she got here.
Relationships: Mahit Dzmare/Three Seagrass, Three Seagrass & Twelve Azalea
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Turquoise Couches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [servantofclio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/gifts).



> Hi servantofclio! You requested Three Seagrass or Twelve Azalea's perspective on the events of the book and also some content about their relationship. I tried to do a little bit of both. Hope you enjoy :D

“You’ll have her back in three hours or so, asekretim—if you get her back at all,” Five Portico says, like getting Mahit back isn’t the most important thing in the world. The surgery door slides shut behind her and Mahit is gone.

Three Seagrass could still  _ stop this _ . She could call the Sunlit, and they’d come and arrest Five Portico. She could physically charge into the surgery and tackle the surgeon like Mahit had attacked that person in her apartments. She could start crying and never stop, not that it’s likely to help.

It’s not her choice. It’s not her  _ brain. _

Legal equivalency, but not moral or ethical equivalency—Mahit had been  _ very _ clear about that. Not physical equivalency, either. Not much equivalency at all, when it came down to it. What use was a liaison to a dead ambassador?

“This was a terrible idea,” Three Seagrass whispers, repeating herself because if she said nothing she would collapse and Mahit would find her in the fetal position on the floor. She stares at the door, praying for anything but silence. 

“Do you trust her?” Three Seagrass asks, still staring.

-

“How long have you known Twelve Azalea?” Mahit had asked and meant “Do you trust him?” like they were the same question. Maybe they were, on Lsel.

-

“Five Portico?” Twelve Azalea is closer to her ear than Three Seagrass expected, still next to her, hand still resting against her arm, “She has a good reputation and I’ve worked with her before. If I wanted illegal experimental neurosurgery, she’s the person  _ I’d _ go to. Hmm” Twelve Azalea pauses dramatically, “do you think I could use some of Mahit’s credit to get an eye like Five Portico’s?”

“And look like the villain in a low-budget entertainment for the rest of your life?” Three Seagrass pretends to consider it, “Well, it would give the rest of us a chance.”

“Do me the courtesy of looking before you make snap judgements.” Three Seagrass drags her eyes away from the surgery door. Twelve Azalea is pulling one eye wide, revealing red inside his eyelids.

Three Seagrass snorts, “You know, you might just start a trend.”

He smiles at her, and it didn’t even try to look real, “I told you. Now come sit down before you fall over.”

-

“Sit down,” Mahit had said. “Watch me reveal some Lsel state secrets.”

Three Seagrass loved to watch Mahit’s hands. When she was being professional, her hands went still. They would rest on her sides, moving only to greet people, up, then back down and perfectly still again. When they were alone, when Mahit started to become comfortable, she began gesticulating, moving her hands to emphasize her words. Her gestures weren’t Teixcalaanli—they were smaller, pivoting at the elbow instead of the shoulder, learned in a culture where people expressed more on their faces and stood closer together and where a stray gesture might sometimes mean spinning out of control in null-g.

Mahit hadn’t been gesturing or fidgeting, as she decrypted the message. She’d been  _ performing _ . She’d fanned through the pages of the dictionary, pausing to touch a word on her roll of paper, then a glyph in the book. After the first she’d paused for a moment, moved her lips in a word that must have been stationer, paused a moment more. Then she’d squared her shoulders, moved forward—touch a word, flip through the book, touch a glyph. Check and double-check, mouth her decryption, move on.

“Yes, yes, so how do I decrypt the rest...” she’d muttered, and it had been so surprising that Three Seagrass had laughed, and  _ tried _ to give her a compliment, and she hadn’t taken it well, and...

Mahit’s fingers might never move like that again. It was a stupid, selfish thing to think. But, and Three Seagrass knew this because she had looked it up, was staring at a list on her cloudhook right now, there were  _ options _ for how brain surgery might leave someone paralyzed for life, or with an uncontrollable tremor, or simply with no memory of how to do a task, needing to relearn it step by painful step.

None of which would be life-ending. But it wasn’t her hands that mattered, beyond the fact that they were  _ very attractive. _

_ _ -

Twelve Azalea sends Three Seagrass an invitation to an online poetry game he hates. He’s set the difficulty to easy. This game offers points for improvisation, quoting a poet and changing their verse to fit each timed prompt. It’s a challenge, and any distraction is welcome, right now.

She doesn’t have to thank him, but she does anyway, working her thoughts into verse across five rounds. It’s more interesting than the game’s suggested prompt of “write a poem about your favorite tree.” She manages to squeeze in enough words about foliage that the game gives her full points anyway.

-

Mahit, at the banquet, asking Three Seagrass for someone who wrote poetry  _ she _ liked, and the more they opposed Nineteen Adze the better. Teasing Nine Maize, with the quirk of her eyebrows that meant ‘I am playing the barbarian and thoroughly enjoying it’. Putting on her barbarian mask, hilariously strong, for Ten Pearl. It had been so easy to work with her, to keep the story going. 

It had been perfect, liaison and ambassador acting as a unit.

Three Seagrass had let herself dream of success. Of being at Mahit’s elbow as she grew into just as much a politician as Yskandr had ever been. Of, quietly, being credited with the greatest of Mahit’s successes, because an ambassador is only as good as their ability to affect the World.

Of Mahit becoming a real friend, more important than ambition.

(Of Mahit’s long fingers in her hair.)

-

Three and a half hours in, Three Seagrass hears Mahit yell. She’s on her feet before she realizes, halfway across the room though there’s nothing she can do to help.

Thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds later, and yes Three Seagrass was counting, Five Portico walks through the surgery door. She brushes her hands off on her tunic like she’d spent the past three hours gardening, “Were you standing there the whole time?”

“No.” It comes out as a snap, “How is she?”

Five Portico shrugs, “Had a seizure, maybe fifteen minutes ago. She’s sleeping it off in my workroom.”

“And that means?”

“Your ambassador is alive. She still has a brain. If she’s not awake in twenty-four hours,” another shrug, “I know a hospital that will take her without asking too many questions.”

“You said—“

“I made no guarantees, asekreta. Your ambassador understood that. If you have other questions, ask them now before I leave to get lunch.”

Three Seagrass shakes her head.

Twelve Azalea follows Five Portico into the kitchen, speaking in a low voice and using medical terms Three Seagrass isn’t familiar with. It doesn’t sound good, but it can’t be that bad if Five Portico is in the kitchen making some sort of bright green smoothie, can it?

-

Mahit, the first time Three Seagrass saw her, grey clothes looking like part of the skyport tunnel’s glass and steel decor, bright sun catching on her hair, haloing her face for a moment in auburn fire. The way her brittle composure had slipped as she dropped her bags to greet Three Seagrass. It was a shocking contrast—the shot straight out of an entertainment, lit like someone who will become emperor, juxtaposed against a barbarian’s first fumbling attempt at Teixcalaanli culture.

Had that moment been her imago-machine breaking? Was it already broken, when she landed in the City? It’s not just that Three Seagrass can’t imagine, she doesn’t have the cultural context to  _ begin.  _

-

Five Portico lets them look at Mahit, for a minute. She lies face-down on another turquoise couch. She’s breathing, slowly. Her eyes are still. It’s the most relaxed Three Seagrass has ever seen her—one arm hanging off the side of the couch. She’s longer than the cushions, feet hanging awkwardly in empty air.

-

Mahit hadn’t been what Three Seagrass expected. She’d known Yskandr Aghavn tangentially. He’d been beyond her level, in the saneness of last week when  _ visiting the emperor in his apartments at midnight _ had been beyond her level. He had complimented her poetry and she had said noncommittal things about his politics, and when she returned to angling for a promotion he apparently went to the Emperor of all Teixcalaan and sold him immortality machines.

Those first few days, they’d been so desperate to know whether Mahit was another Yskandr Aghavn. Don’t put the Ambassador’s accesses through, how will she react? Take her directly from the skyport to look at her predecessor’s corpse, will she use it to her advantage? Show up at her apartments with a story about metal in Aghavn’s brain, kidnap her, attack her, protect her. Push her, and find out where she’ll run.

And run she had, straight to the heart of every political problem in Teixcalaan. With no more information than a fifteen-year-old snapshot of court politics and her trust in Three Seagrass, Mahit had created, and maybe solved, more problems than Agahvn had in any given year.

And that was it, wasn’t it?

From the moment Mahit had landed in the City, she and Three Seagrass had been spinning together, feeding each other’s forward momentum. They’d driven each other forward, done more than either could do alone. In all the time Mahit had been in Teixcalaan, this was the first time Three Seagrass had ever seen her  _ stop _ . There wasn’t a forward from here, not if Mahit didn’t wake up.

Shit, what was she going to do if Mahit stopped forever?

-

Five hours, and Three Seagrass is trying to rebraid her hair. She gives up and lets it fall loose around her shoulders. It gets in her mouth when she turns her head, but her hands are shaking too much to try again.

Seven hours, and she’s leaning her head against Twelve Azalea’s shoulder, trying to nap. Failing. Looking at half-finished drafts of poetry and finding words totally inadequate, or totally unreachable.

Eight hours and the poetry is coming after all, lines and lines of it while Twelve Azalea snores softly.

Ten hours and Five Portico has left the apartment. There’s a syringe on the kitchen counter and if they hear Mahit yell and start convulsing they’re to inject her with the contents.

Eleven hours, and the workroom door opens.

Mahit is there. Mahit is  _ alive _ . Mahit is making a soft little moan as Three Seagrass hugs her and, “You’re alive!—oh fuck, did I hurt you?” She lets go of Mahit, holds her at arm’s length. She  _ looks _ the same. Exhausted, skin a shade of sickly grey Three Seagrass didn’t think could happen to a real human, “Are you— _ you?” _

It takes Mahit a moment to think, or decide, or reorient herself from the hug, “...yes, not any more than I hurt already, and that  _ still _ depends on the Teixcalaanli definition of  _ you, _ Three Seagrass.”

It did, and as Mahit’s friend Three Seagrass cared about that. But they were moving forward again, accelerating now. Regardless of whether the Mahit who walked out of the room was the same one who walked in, Three Seagrass was coming along for the ride.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the prompt! This was super fun to write :D 
> 
> I've borrowed small bits of dialogue from chapters nine, fifteen, and seventeen. And, y'know, Arkady Martine owns everything and I am but a humble visitor to her world.


End file.
